When I first started in Elements I had the hardest time visualizing what people on the forum were talking about. I asked the dumbest Qs, over and over. The nice people here patiently explained, over and over I would finally get it, especially if a screen-shot was posted.
I posted this picture a few days ago; got a lot of nice comments. The routine is pretty simple. Here are some screen shots for anybody that wants to try it for the first time.
The plan was to try to depict the "motion" of a person walking up a flight of stairs. I took a series of shots: exact same exposures, exact same view (camera was on a tripod). The first step is to start with the first frame (background layer) and then drag each successive frame onto that file, in sequence, with the last frame on top.
Now, starting at the very top layer, erase parts of that layer to the right and below the person. Drop down to the second layer and do that again - erase to the right and below. Drop down to the next layer and repeat. Keep doing that. The very bottom layer is left undisturbed.
It doesn't really matter how you select the parts to be erased. Use whatever you are comfortable with; I happened to use the polygon lasso tool.
The final step is to tweak the layers.
There were several places where parts of the person in the "lower layer" overlapped part of the person in the layer just above. I used the eraser and a small-size brush to erase parts of the upper layer to reveal those places.
Voila!
In this particular image, selecting and deleting, or erasing, was easy because it didn't have to be precise. I was using a very slow shutter (1/8th) because I wanted some motion blur on the moving person. If you are working with crisp, sharply focused images, you need to be much more precise when erasing. If you are shooting on a tripod, every single image should be perfectly aligned. I must have bumped the tripod because my very first shot was just slightly "off", just a bit but still not quite perfect. The solution is, for that layer, Select > All, engage the move tool, and then use the up/down, left/right arrows, one click at a time, to nudge that entire layer into alignment with the others.
Give it a try -- much easier to do than to explain
Rusty
I posted this picture a few days ago; got a lot of nice comments. The routine is pretty simple. Here are some screen shots for anybody that wants to try it for the first time.
The plan was to try to depict the "motion" of a person walking up a flight of stairs. I took a series of shots: exact same exposures, exact same view (camera was on a tripod). The first step is to start with the first frame (background layer) and then drag each successive frame onto that file, in sequence, with the last frame on top.
Now, starting at the very top layer, erase parts of that layer to the right and below the person. Drop down to the second layer and do that again - erase to the right and below. Drop down to the next layer and repeat. Keep doing that. The very bottom layer is left undisturbed.
It doesn't really matter how you select the parts to be erased. Use whatever you are comfortable with; I happened to use the polygon lasso tool.
The final step is to tweak the layers.
There were several places where parts of the person in the "lower layer" overlapped part of the person in the layer just above. I used the eraser and a small-size brush to erase parts of the upper layer to reveal those places.
Voila!
In this particular image, selecting and deleting, or erasing, was easy because it didn't have to be precise. I was using a very slow shutter (1/8th) because I wanted some motion blur on the moving person. If you are working with crisp, sharply focused images, you need to be much more precise when erasing. If you are shooting on a tripod, every single image should be perfectly aligned. I must have bumped the tripod because my very first shot was just slightly "off", just a bit but still not quite perfect. The solution is, for that layer, Select > All, engage the move tool, and then use the up/down, left/right arrows, one click at a time, to nudge that entire layer into alignment with the others.
Give it a try -- much easier to do than to explain
Rusty